Archaeologies of Convicts

The forced migration of convicts from Britain was the primary reason for founding the colony at Sydney, and the substantial legacy of convict sites and structures remain a focus of historical archaeology. The extensive secondary punishment sites of Norfolk Island (1825-56) and Port Arthur (1830-77) with their associated work stations as well as smaller institutions like Sarah and Maria Islands, and the remoter Port Essington, Fort Dundas, and Raine Island have been mapped and recorded. Convicts worked in Western Australia from 1850 to 1868 and left a legacy of public works and roads. South Australia was transportation free.

Physically the colonial landscape was essentially shaped by convicts, whether quarrying stone to build jails, barracks, and fortifications; roads and bridges; or as laborers on settler estates and eventually as freed settlers (emancipists). Socially, convictism within the settlement meant an unusually fluid colonial structure. Most convicts were not confined, and moved to assignment and tickets of leave: when their sentences ended, they continued to merge with other colonists equally determined to forge ahead in a new land. One consequence is that without reference to documents, the roles and activities of convicts are virtually indistinguishable in the archaeological record.

New detail on the convict system has come from rescue excavations. Remains of Old Sydney Gaol was one of the earliest, as were parts of Government Houses at Sydney, Norfolk Island, Hobart, Port Macquarie, and elsewhere. Traces of early convict activities in Sydney and Parramatta include locally made earthenware vessels and bricks made from local clay as well as ephemeral remains of early domestic structures.

More recent research has investigated strategies of power, gender, and resistance especially in places of secondary confinement, as in excavations at Ross Female Factory, one of several such institutions. Evidence of the three categories of prisoners at the Factory was recovered - the newly arrived, those ready for hiring out to work, and those serving time for more crimes. The hidden and lost below-floor artifacts suggested that the third class of prisoners were more proactive in further bending rules about liquor, smoking, and adornment. Revisiting the earlier salvage clearance of the Norfolk Island hospital privy has allowed analysis of its deposit of Second Settlement artifacts with their seeming dark insights into the power-plays of sick convicts there. More distant again, the limited excavations and wider survey at the military outpost of Port Essington identified three construction phases between 1838 and 1849, one characterized by convict workmanship. Artifacts from the excavations plus intensive historical research produced a study contextualized with British Empire trade and military policy as well as within the colony.

Similarly, analysis of convict building programs may provide insights into changing government policies and efficiency (1826-40s), as shown in the Great North Road stockades or the Fort Dundas military outpost (1824-28). Variations in both ground plan and quality of construction work give rise in each location to interesting inferences about the nature of control and supervision of the work gangs, and ultimately about power and resistance. Poor-quality work flows from inadequate control of work gangs, changes of ground plan facilitate greater control, excellent construction means efficient management - all interesting hypotheses for testing.

At different times good behavior by convicts earned them transfers to work on probation stations (Tasmania), and assignment to free settlers as laborers in NSW. Sometimes on estates in NSW, the separate barracks built for assignees survive. Once free, emancipists merged into the colony’s growing population. Some who can be textually identified lived in Sydney’s Rocks as shown in the Cumberland St. excavation (and others), and developed family homes indistinguishable from nonconvict households, with good tableware, toys, ornaments, and reasonable diet despite very average building structures, street refuse, and adjacent slaughter-yards.